After a whirlwind of travel, it is a blessing to be back in San Francisco! I return from Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, benefiting from work on building energy efficiency policy, specifically building energy codes, voluntary green building certifications, and building energy benchmarking requirements.

What’s next? Stay tuned! I hope to put the lessons learned from my time overseas to good use, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company would certainly like me to finish my work on their Mills River facility. I’m looking forward to new challenges in the building sector, to say the least.

I’ll be writing a bit more about my observations of the Australian real estate market, and the energy policies and programs impacting it on the blog, so keep an eye out for those upcoming posts, if you are in to that sort of thing.

“Building Energy Rating & Benchmarking: Understanding Similarities and Differences” written by Lane Burt, Andrew Burr, and Adam Hinge published at the 2015 ECEEE Summer Study on buildings in Hyeres, France.

A paper I co-authored with Andrew Burr (U.S. Department of Energy) and Adam Hinge (Sustainable Energy Partnerships), informed by my time in Australia, was published at the biennial ECEEE Summer Study on Buildings. I took one for the team and presented the paper at the event held in the French Riviera.

The paper details the structural differences in benchmarking programs in Europe, the U.S. and Australia, looks at the initial data these programs are generating, and suggests outstanding questions that need to be answered in the coming years. There is no link yet, so contact me if you would like a copy.

Cities continue to move forward on public benchmarking programs for big buildings

While I was down under, Atlanta and Kansas City added their names to the growing list of real estate markets where annual energy data will be available. The multifamily sector in Philadelphia was also added to the city’s existing program.

While the benefit of this information to those that buy and sell buildings (or those that invest in companies that acquire, own and operate buildings) is clear, are there other uses for the data these programs generate? Based on what I saw in Australia, I think I have some ideas. Ask me.